


when the dust does roam

by friendly_ficus



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Non-Chronological, can someone in Exandria invent therapy please these kids need it, is it really grief if you don’t acknowledge it? some say yes, memories and how they change us, spoilers up to episode 42
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 09:09:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16658266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: Beau wakes with the familiar taste of dirt and old blood in the back of her mouth.(Or: Beau, in fragments.)





	when the dust does roam

  Vera sketches an arcane shape in the air and Caleb moves faster than she’s ever seen him move, something powerful in his face. 

  Beau’s pretty sure they were fucked already, so the wall of flames is almost reassuring. Avantika’s all kinds of crazy hot, with an emphasis on the crazy, and she’s had the Mighty Nein in her sights and under her thumb for just a little too long. In the back of her mind, a voice that sounds a lot like Expositor Dairon whispers  _ where there is corruption, there is something you can break.  _

  So, they’re sort of surrounded. So, this isn’t exactly how she wanted it to go down. So, if they can’t get the evidence to the Plank King they’re screwed no matter what. 

  Beau cracks her knuckles and gets ready to break shit.

\---

  She’s never a very highly-ranked sort of criminal; she’s a local kid with a chip on her shoulder and a knack for getting into things she shouldn’t. She’s useful and useable and has a few good local contacts who funnel work her way. 

  None of them give two shits about her, but hey, that’s a two-way street.

  Whoever ratted her out is a fucking rat, though, because her father delivers a long lecture and the monks get her unconscious with a couple weird nerve hits. Her last coherent thought: _ there’s not a soul in this whole damn city that’s gonna miss me. _

\---

  “Everyone has had hardships, right? What’s it matter.” Beau kicks a pebble as they walk, Nott looking up with her round yellow eyes. 

  “Besides, he sent me off to the monks. I think he was hoping that they were going to beat my indiscretions out of me. Instead, I think all of the things that my father saw in me that he hated, the monks saw as a potential advantage. So, in a weird way, I think it might’ve been the nicest thing he ever did for me.” 

  Nott just keeps watching her, but Hupperdook seems like the best place to open this wound, weirdly enough. Maybe it’s the party. Maybe it’s how all of Nott’s hardships are worn on the outside of her skin, maybe it’s the weight of knowing what they both know about Caleb. Probably the party, though, or the drink.

  It’s weird, that maybe they could be her friends. That maybe they are her friends. That she has friends now.

\---

  Yasha is... woah.  _ Woah.  _ Tall and super strong and just, woah.

  “Will you hold me through the show?”  _ That’s something people ask, right? _

  If she had five gold, she would have paid it.

\---

  Beau wakes with the familiar taste of dirt and old blood in the back of her mouth. Keg shakes her shoulder carefully, and pulling away from Nila’s warm arm is so unpleasant that Beau almost flops right back down. Still, she’s a team player and goes to her watch.

  The cold wind of the storm tugs at the strands of hair that’ve slipped from her bun, and snow falls quietly all around the outcropping everyone’s cuddled up in.

  If she’s thinking about the sound Molly made when Lorenzo’s glaive stabbed through his chest, well, no one’s around to call her out on it.

  If she shakily whispers his name, curses him for dying, curses Lorenzo for killing him, well. No one’s awake to hear it. There’s no evidence of it ever happening, that way. It’s better. It’s better like that.

  At one point she glances up and watches the flakes fall, shivering, and feels nothing at all.

\---

  Beau has two plans to kill Ikithon an hour after Caleb spills his guts to her and Nott. Neither of these plans will  _ work,  _ sure, but she has them. She keeps making plans, too, even though she’s not exactly the planning type.

  Beau understands a little more than the rest of the Nein would, about what it would take to kill an  _ Archmage  _ of the damn  _ Cerberus Assembly.  _ No big, just one of the most powerful magic users in the whole Empire. Not that she’s about to bring it up with the others - that’s Caleb’s shit, okay, and everyone’s got some baggage. It slips a little once, with the bowl and Calianna, and it felt... Look, Beau’s not one for moralizing, but it felt  _ bad,  _ okay? It felt bad enough for her to apologize and ask Caleb to be her friend and everything.

  Anyway, Trent. Yeah, she has a few ideas - he’s in charge of Empire propaganda and everything like that, so she didn’t like him much anyway and now there’s this Caleb thing - but nothing concrete. Nothing workable, not yet.

  But she wants him dead, even if Caleb hasn’t mentioned it yet. Wants to shatter the whole rotten core of the Empire while she’s at it. If the opportunity comes up.

\---

  “If the system isn’t doing it’s job,” Expositor Dairon says, “destroy the system.”

  Something in Beau burns at that directive, something  _ ignites,  _ and she can almost see it through her throbbing headache. She hates duty, avoids responsibility, talks shit to obligation on a regular basis, but this is different. It’s like... a chance. A chance to do something that matters, not something that serves her father’s business or the fucking river of crap that is Empire and it’s many tributaries.

  There’s a lot of bad shit around, she thinks, rotten vineyards and corrupt Lawmasters and ivory towers where Archmages look down and cast judgement. In her heart of hearts, she wants very much to set it all on fire, burn it to the ground and see what can be built up from the ashes. Dairon wants her to do it, Dairon can help her do it, thinks some fuckup from Kamordah has the guts to check authority.

  “I don’t really believe in systems or being a part of them, let alone a system that takes down other systems. Seems almost hypocritical,” she needles, already testing the offer. If this is a lie... well, she won’t work with them. Not like she could take Dairon down, but she could make herself pretty annoying, unpleasant to deal with. Beau’s good at becoming the problem child.

  The Expositor regards her with steady eyes. “Perhaps. Who knows. Maybe one day you’ll find the corruption inside our own.”

\---

  “Beauregard,” says Caleb, staring out the carriage window, “who  _ are  _ you?”

_ Shit, man, that’s kinda the question, isn’t it? _ Beau isn’t sure if she’s a friend or a gravedigger or just a regular old mercenary, out to survive and not much else. As she tells him some of the Cobalt Soul party line, a little of that ‘we’re a system that breaks systems’ crap, she wonders. What does it mean, to be part of a system? What does it mean to destroy one?

  What’s the fucking point of any of it, when all systems can become corrupt, when your first friend gets kidnapped by slavers along with two of your other friends and you bury another one along the way? 

\---

  Jester’s mom is really nice, which is good because Beau was absolutely ready to hate her. It seems sorta stupid now, sitting in the fancy dressing room talking to the Ruby of the Sea, but for Jester Beau will hate anyone. She’s glad she doesn’t have to, though. This time.  _ Head on a swivel,  _ she reminds herself,  _ just like Professor Thaddeus. Not in the Empire anymore.  _

  Everything is a little different on the Menagerie Coast, a little more colorful. The corruption that inevitably exists seems a little farther away when you’re breathing ocean air. She’s never seen so much water in her life, never been in a city quite like this one.

  If the Gentleman is Jester’s dad, though, Beau’s ready to hate him at the drop of a hat. 

  (Maybe, possibly, she can pick Jester’s spirits up about it as she goes to work on him. Sometimes, cheering up friends works best by beating up the source of their unhappiness with a stick. Or throwing blades at it. Or punching.)

\---

  The problem with Mollymauk isn’t even that he’s an ass or self-righteous or anything like that (and he  _ was,  _ he was all that and more) it’s that he’s dead. Beau tries not to think about that very much, the  _ splat  _ of his blood on Lorenzo’s smug fucking face and the glaze over his red eyes, empty, empty,  _ empty- _

  Tonight, the deck of the Squall-Eater rocks gently below, creaks the quarters she and Jester share; the shitty wine Beau’d been drinking was a waste of whatever it’d been aged in and the wineskin’s empty now, anyway. Yasha didn’t come below at all tonight, stayed staring out over the horizon as the sunset painted purple and orange and gold, watching the distant circle of the moon in the sky. If Beau was someone else, someone convincing, maybe she’d have argued. Maybe said something about the value of sleep or talking out your problems. But hey, who is Beau to bring that up? Everyone’s got shit.

  Speaking of that, here, a portrait of a monk. A fine picture - sitting on the edge of one of the skinny beds with an empty wineskin, little piece of metal in her hands, goggles pulled haphazardly over her eyes so she can watch Jester’s blanket-covered back rise and fall. The tiefling shifts in the dark, mumbles something sleepily. Fjord, maybe, or her mom or the Traveler or even just donuts.

_ Jester’s alive, see,  _ Beau thinks, turning a throwing star over and over and glancing regularly at the door.  _ And Fjord’s alive, and Yasha’s alive, see? So, me, if we could get some goddamn sleep it’d be  _ _ real _ _ nice. _ Drowsiness is elusive, lately, and when she shuts her eyes she sees hydras or snakes or. Or. Or Mollymauk Tealeaf dead on the ground,  _ fuck, _ or Yasha unconscious on the wall or Jester and Fjord chained up in a slaver’s cell.

  There’s a wriggling in her pocket that she almost strikes at, comes a breath away from before remembering and fishing Frumpkin out as gently as she can manage. He gnaws on her knuckles a little, where the calluses are thick, and she sets him on her knee. He weighs so little, for all the feathers and fluff. She could break him if she wanted to and it wouldn’t even be difficult - Professor Thaddeus would’ve at least taken an eye down with him.

  She doesn’t want to hurt Frumpkin, though, because he’s useful and he sort of makes her feel happy in the way the Professor might have, and because he’s Caleb’s cat. Caleb’s weird, magic cat. Caleb’s weird magic cat that’s staring intently at Jester’s sleeping form before turning,  _ step-step-step-step  _ with his little feet on her knee, to look at Beau’s own face.

  “Caleb,” she says, careful to keep her voice low, “get some damn sleep.”

  Frumpkin tilts his head and lets out the tiniest little  _ hoot  _ she’s ever heard.

  “I’ll be fine, mind your own business.” 

  Jester shifts a little, calls, “Traveler! Why didn’t... you...” and Beau could swear Frumpkin holds his breath along with her as they watch Jester roll over. She’s still sleeping, thankfully, because Beau’s... not super great at comforting. Fjord says that’s like, level eight stuff and she’s on about level two of social skills.

  Frumpkin digs small talons into her knee insistently.

  “Fuck off, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Beau picks the bird up and sets him in the hood of her own cloak, out of reach of any weasels or startled monks in the morning. It’d suck to have to tell Caleb that his Frumpkin got eaten by Sprinkle.

  She already  _ knows  _ that they need to be at their best, okay? She knows that Fjord’s in over his head with this Avantika mess and that Jester’s not actually as fine as she’s acting and that Yasha’s... well, that she would Yasha if there was anything around them but ocean. Empire kids stick together, or something. They have to be at their best.

  Still, sleep eludes her. She watches where Jester’s hand has slipped out from her blanket, smudges of ink on her fingers.  _ Tattoos, huh.  _

  Beau reaches for her pack and roots around for a while until she finds the rectangular parcel at the very bottom. The deck is wrapped in canvas, as waterproof as she can make it. Shuffling makes her calm, the same motions over and over again. Even with the goggles, it’s too dark to make out which card is which as she turns them between her fingers.

_ Tattoos. Huh. _

  When she finally sleeps, she dreams of peacocks and red, glazed eyes, empty but for the light of a faraway moon.

**Author's Note:**

> I love 1 (one) monk.  
> So there we have it, 2k words of me sort of just trying to figure Beau out a little more. Of the Nein, she and Caduceus are the most challenging for me to write. Also, Beau mentioning a tattoo in Molly’s honor had me so emotional like... wow.  
> This is probably as close as I’ll get to writing about Molly, sort of viewing him through the rest of the characters is the best way I can do it.  
> Title comes from the song “The Feeling Kind” by Thao & The Get Down Stay Down.  
> I hope you enjoyed this fic! Let me know what you think!


End file.
